One of those nights where I wanted to spend an hour working on a site – you know, really quick-like – and I ended up spending 3 (count’em – three…) hours f@cking with my MAMP server.
I’ve got several folders of sites on my local computer, and I switched from one I had been working on recently to another new folder of a site I had just downloaded. And in my MAMP dashboard, MySQL was working fine, but Apache would not start.
Three hours later and lots of testing, let’s just skip to the answer – the enclosing folder (not the actual html docs folder I was pointing to in the MAMP prefs, but the enclosing folder) had an accented character in the folder name. Yes, like the accent over the “e” in frusté, for example… (Or perhaps more to the point, emmerdé)
This may be obvious to the Linux heads, but to a Mac user like myself, it took hours of narrowing down the problem. Add to that the fact that MAMP/Apache would not reset even after you changed the folder it looked at until you actually restarted MAMP (i.e. using the MAMP button to cycle the servers did not help).
Sigh. Now I’m where I wanted to be… oh, 3 hours ago?
Thank you … You SAVED ME HOURS. My document directory had been deleted so MAMP was refusing to start the Apache server. I just had to point MAMP to the new directory.
Hi Thanks for sharing that, saved a few big headaches! Very useful. Stu
Apache wasn’t starting for me. I had to check My Preferences -> Sharing. I had a bunch check for some reason. I unchecked all but file sharing and now it’s working for me.
Yeah, system prefs if web sharing is on seems to prevent apache in mamp. i guess this is due to two apache instances running on same… ports? i dunno. anyway turning off web sharing got it working.
thanks for these notes peeps.
Thanks so much for this short statement. It helped me a lot.
A big thank you to you and Jason W. for solving my problem. I’m new to this and it tripped me up for a while.
This was my problem too. Thanks a lot for this comment!
Great one, your hours saved us lots of hours:)
One of my dev site’s directory exisits on a disk image since it needs Case Sensitive formatting for proper SVN to work with the server.
Sometimes, if a forced restart or weird shutdown occurs, an alias for the exteranl hard drive is left lingering. Upon fresh restart, the auto loading disk image get’s a _1 added to its Mount Point.
To fix it, these steps do the trick:
1. Eject Offending Mounted Drive
2. Duplicate in case of accidental deletion
3. Turn on Hidden Files :http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2007/03/23/mac-os-x-show-hide-hidden-files-in-finder/
(Enter into a new Terminal window:)
yourmachine:~ $ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
yourmachine:~ $ killall Finder
5. Navigate to /Volumes under your Main HD (http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-346597.html)
6. Delete aliases to volume(s) in question
7. Hide hidden files
(in same Terminal window:)
yourmachine:~ $ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles False
yourmachine:~ $ killall Finder
8. Remount Offending disk images and their mount point should no be incremented
Heya – Yeah, the solution for me was to open system preferences and in ‘sharing’ turn off ‘web sharing’
Woo!
Really thanks for your post, it fixes my problem.
After changing the name of my htdocs, the apache won’t start properly.
Really thanks!!!
Thank you very much for this post! You just saved me a ton of time.
I didn’t get this post my Apache does not work and i don’t know what to do and to me this post made no sense.
and i have turned off my sharing and it still wont work
Thanx a lot!! There’s no faster solving than to have some people around who already know the answer. I had already forgotten about my Web Share
Thanks man, you saved me a lot of time.
If Apache’s still not starting, you’ll be wondering where the hell the error log is, right? The docs say it’s at /Applications/MAMP/logs/apache_error_log
Well, it’s only there if the server actually manages to start. Nice. The real log is your mac’s Console utility. Just scroll to the bottom of the pane that comes up to see the latest error. Worked for me, giving me the line number of an error in my httpd.conf file.
Cheers Michaels – your comment was a savior! I had tried to use the ~ shortcut in httpd.conf to reference my home directory instead of hardcoding my username. That’s a no-no, but I couldn’t find the issue until you mentioned checking Console. Thanks!
I had the same issue , it seems that the mamp needs to reset the ports,
to resolve go into the mamp preferences…/ports/ and reset MAMP ports, after close MAMP and open it again and it must work, if you require to use the default ports apache 80 and mysql 3306 after restarting the MAMP go to preferences /ports but in this time click to the button “Set to default Apache and Mysql ports and click ok, close again MAMP and restart it, it must reset the ports…
Hey all,
I followed all the techniques mentioned above and my apache still does not start up. I am using MAMP on a Mac OS (Lion). Kindly Help!
H
I found the solution:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3243357?start=0&tstart=0
Thank you for the article! In my case it mistyping in ‘Disc Location’ path. Thank again!